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Category: General

Academia / Economics / General

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Funding Research Randomly

In this post, Louis Larue (Aalborg University, Denmark) discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the appropriateness of selecting research applications randomly.

Philosopher in despair after his many applications for funding were rejected by Rembrandt, Musée du Louvre, Paris; Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Applying for external funding is an integral part of academic life. Universities dedicate huge amounts of resources, and often have entire teams of administrators and advisors, to help researchers obtain external grants and manage the immense load of paperwork required to administrate successful applications. Researchers and teachers, at all stages of their careers, spend considerable time and resources to write, read, revise, and submit applications. If successful, they will then have to write various reports and will be required to master the complex and often obscure language of funding agencies. At a more advanced stage of their careers, they will also dedicate a significant share of their time to reviewing and evaluating applications submitted by others and to sit in various selection committees.

Most of the time, the selection procedure involves (in one or several steps) the evaluation of the scientific quality of the submitted applications, by one or several peer reviewers. When all evaluations have been gathered, a selection committee usually selects successful applicants. The ideal behind this procedure (which I have only sketched, and which varies across countries and institutions) is to select, impartially, the “best” applications, that is, those with the highest level of scientific quality, properly defined.

Let’s call this selection procedure the “Peer Review procedure” (or PR). In recent years, it has attracted much criticism. For many, it is a costly, biased, and conservative procedure that is unable to deliver on its promise to select the best applications. In response to these criticisms, many authors have advocated mixed procedures involving various degrees of peer review and random selection (for instance, here and here).  Following usage in the literature, I will call these mixed procedures “Modified Lotteries” (or ML).

The modified lottery is a two-stage procedure. At stage 1, the members of the selection committee select, among all eligible applications, the ones that they judge to be the most qualified applications, that is, those that meet minimal standards of scientific quality. At this stage, only the “worst” applications are rejected. The selection rate is thus allowed to be high, or, in any case, much higher than the current selection rate. At stage 2, a certain percentage of the applications selected at stage 1 is randomly selected. The percentage of applications selected at stage 2 is simply a function of the amount of money at the disposal of the funding agency.

In this post, I shall argue that the modified lottery procedure would strike a better balance between scientific quality, cost-effectiveness, impartiality, and fairness, than the current peer review procedure. (In the article, I also discuss, and reject, pure random selection, but I leave that part of the argument aside here).

Cost-effectiveness and scientific quality

A first intuitive argument for the use of random selection is that it would liberate time and money for researchers to do actual research. For the time dedicated to writing and reviewing applications amounts to time not dedicated to research and teaching. Considering the fact that most applications are rejected, this time is generally wasted.

However, the cost-reducing potential of random selection should not be over-estimated. A recent survey of applicants to the Health Research Council of New Zealand, which is among the first funders to use a Mixed Lottery, report that most of the applicants declared that they did not reduce the time spent writing their applications. Moreover, the time dedicated to reviewing proposals is not necessarily wasted. First, reviewers may be expected to set aside at least the proposals that do not meet minimal standards – an ability that should not be underestimated. Second, even if we assume that they cannot, getting rid of peer reviewers entirely may remove the incentive to write serious research proposals.

Hence, the relationship between the costs and benefits of investing time and money in selecting applications demands further consideration. In the article, I argue that costs are justified if they allow setting aside the applications that do not meet minimal standards of scientific quality; and that they are unjustified otherwise. Hence, dedicating time and money to peer reviewing applications is justified up to the point where peer reviewers can no longer perform their selection job. The empirical literature has for years stressed that peer reviewers are often unable to agree on the ranking of excellent applications, though they are more likely to agree on those applications that do not reach a minimal level of quality. The mixed lottery is thus to be preferred to the current system, because the limited space it gives to peer review allows to reduce its costs in a way that is not detrimental to scientific quality, since stage 1 is there to make sure that some peer reviewing still takes place. Though it may be impossible to find the “optimal” level of peer review, it is likely to be greater than zero and lower than the current level.

Impartiality and biases

A common complaint about peer review is that it is biased. There is evidence that the Peer Review procedure tends to be biased against women and ethnic minorities. Moreover, personal relationships as well as a preference for one’s own area of expertise tend to skew the peer reviewers’ evaluations. For all these reasons, a selection procedure based on peer review is unlikely to be impartial.

It is uncontroversial to say that these biases are bad, even morally wrong. Yet we may have reasons to accommodate some biases for the sake of retaining some place to peer review. In very short, my argument is the following: peer review is necessary to (at least) set aside the worst applications from the rest and to avoid removing the incentive of writing minimally good applications. Yet peer review is also inherently biased in some way. Hence, getting rid of all biases would require getting rid of peer review entirely, which would be detrimental to scientific quality. How do we get out of this dilemma?

My view is that, because peer review is unescapable, we should allow for the possibility that biases will influence the selection procedure. In that context, the modified lottery is preferrable to the current system, because it minimises the influence of biases, by leaving only a limited space to peer reviewers. However, those who would want to condemn biases more severely than I do, will have to contemplate the necessity to get rid of peer reviewers entirely and turn to pure random selection instead. My view is that the latter move would come at a cost for the advancement of science, because it would lower the probability to fund the best research. As I argue below, it may also be unfair.

Fairness

A further frequent complain against the current pee-review procedure is that it is unfair (see for instance here), though “unfair” is often confused with “biased”. However, this complaint may also be raised against proposals to select research proposals randomly (either partially or totally): isn’t that unfair to excellent applicants to consider all applications equally?

In the article, I use Broome’s idea that the fair distribution of a good requires that claims to a good should be satisfied in proportion to their strength. In our case, the good to be fairly distributed is research money. People’s claim to that good will depend on the extent to which their future research will be the most likely to produce the best science. Therefore, one may say that grants are distributed fairly when they are allocated to the proposals that have the strongest claim to research money, that is, to those that are the most likely to produce the best research.

In an ideal world without budget constraints, biases and other limitations, the peer review procedure would be the best and the fairest procedure: it would always select the most deserving applicants. But we do not live in such a world. First, in the real world, budget constraints may prevent funding bodies from giving money to all deserving applicants (i.e. those who have the strongest claim to it). Second, peer reviewers may be unable to reach a consensus on who the most deserving applicants are (a phenomenon that I call “epistemic limitations”). In that world, the modified lottery is the best choice.

As I have argued above, we may expect peer reviewers to be able to track scientific quality up to a certain point. If peer review has some value, the first stage of the modified lottery will allow to set aside the applications that have some minimal level merit (that is, a “minimal claim to research money”) from those who do not. The first stage therefore guarantees, at least to some extent, a certain degree of discrimination based on merit. But beyond that point, random selection is to be preferred, since no actual argument based on reasons may be used where epistemic uncertainty prevents reviewers from collectively distinguishing between applications. At stage 2, random selection ensures, at least, that all applications that have passed stage 1 have an equal chance to get funding, and that it is not biases or arbitrariness that decide among them.

The modified lottery is therefore not a fair procedure: it will not automatically distribute research money to those who have the strongest claim to it. But it is fairer than other procedures. It is fairer than pure random selection because it leaves some place to merit, which random selection fails to do; and it is fairer than the current system because, once the possibilities of peer review have been exhausted, it does not pretend to be able to select the best proposals among proposals whose relative merit is undistinguishable by reviewers (or disputed). Rather, it gives equal weight to all of them.

Some readers may still complain that the modified lottery disrespects excellent applicants, those who really deserve to be selected. In response, I would like to stress that the first stage of the proposal is meant to ensure that the best candidates are among the pool of short-listed applicants, and that they are selected according to shared standards of scientific quality. My view is that we cannot hope for more: it is beyond the capacity of peer reviewers to discover the “truly” best applicants. Moreover, the second stage limits the influence of non-scientific criteria (biases, etc), which might be present at stage 1, so that good candidates with profiles that are more likely to attract biases have a higher chance (compared to the present system) to be selected. So both stages actually contribute to increasing the ability of the procedure to track scientific excellence, rather than something else. Finally, we may have serious doubts that the current procedure is selecting the best applications. Lack of resources and various biases, as well as possible disagreements among evaluators on the quality of different applications, prevent the current system from doing its job well. Therefore, though there is a risk that the modified lottery will sometimes fail to select some of the best applications, this risk is probably not much higher than for the current peer review procedure.

Louis Larue is a researcher at the Aalborg University, Denmark; and a guest professor at the Hoover Chair of Social and Economic Ethics, UCLouvain, Belgium. He has published on the ethics of money and finance, and on several issues in the philosophy of economics. His first book, entitled Alternative Currencies: a Critical Approach, has just been published by Routledge.

Academia / General / Pedagogy / Teaching Philosophy

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Workshop announcement: Tackling speciesism and anthropocentrism in higher education

Before we return to our schedule of regular posts, I wanted to take the opportunity to share information about this online workshop.

From institutional pressures to competing demands from students, teachers are increasingly having to navigate complex political, pedagogical, and ethical challenges. For anti-speciesist teachers in the context of anthropocentric societies, there are several further layers of difficulty: how should we approach the teaching of core subjects and the general “canon”, when those often replicate speciesist norms and assumptions? Is it necessary to balance “objectivity” and advocacy? Is pedagogical or academic rigour threatened by moves towards animal-friendly pedagogy? How should we  engage with students and colleagues who are resistant to non-anthropocentric perspectives? What specific pedagogical strategies or curriculum design choices (e.g., choice of texts, use of various media, interactive activities, assessment design) can anti-speciesist teachers effectively employ to introduce non-anthropocentric materials without alienating students or triggering a defensive backlash?

This online workshop aims to bring together academics working in politics, philosophy, and adjacent fields to consider the challenges and opportunities associated with tackling speciesism and anthropocentrism in higher education. It will be an opportunity to share ideas, research, and experience. We invite contributions from anyone involved in teaching in relevant fields. We’re looking to provide a space to share reflections on experiences as well as formal paper-presentations. Keeping this in mind, we invite submissions of the following types:

  1. Research papers discussing topics related to the workshop theme, including but not limited to:
    1. Animal activism and teaching,
    2. Teaching controversial topics related to animals,
    3. Teaching the canon with animals in mind,
    4. The intersection between non-anthropocentrism/anti-speciesism, decolonisation, and/or diversification of the curriculum,
    5. The effectiveness of pedagogical interventions,
    6. The role (or reaction) of the broader institution in (or to) animal-friendly pedagogy.
  2. Case-studies, including but not limited to:
    1. Experience of developing non-anthropocentric/anti-speciesist curricula.
    2. Experience of teaching on topics such as non-anthropocentrism, animal rights, veganism, and so on.
    3. Experience of non-traditional forms of assessment, such as reflective journals, campaign projects for animal-related issues, policy design or review addressing animal-related issues. 

Submissions must be suitable for approx. 15-20 minute presentations and Q&A/discussion. Please send anonymised submissions to sara.vangoozen [at] york.ac.uk

The deadline for submissions is 30 March 2026

For any further information, please also contact Sara van Goozen.

Distribution / Duties / General / Moral values / Social justice

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The Anarchist Banker and the Acceptability of Effective Altruism

Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister | 1539 | Massijs, Jan

In his book The Anarchist Banker, the Portuguese poet and novelist Fernando Pessoa tells the story of an anarchist who also happens to be a banker. His old comrades are shocked by this apparent contradiction of normative beliefs and actions. But the anarchist justifies his unexpected choice of occupation by pointing out that anarchists can achieve none of their ideals if they don’t have the means to do so. Becoming a banker is, in fact, the best way to contribute to the anarchist cause! Or so, at least, is the banker’s argument.

At first, one may suspect that Pessoa’s anarchist banker is not honest. We could rightly infer from his choice of occupation that he has relinquished the ideals of his youth and that his anarchist talk is just that: mere talk. But another interpretation is possible: what if the anarchist banker is in fact honest? And what if his way of life is, in fact, the best way to contribute to anarchism, because the money he generates through his banking activities allows him to support the anarchist cause more effectively than most other anarchists? Isn’t he simply a sort of effective altruist? For, like effective altruists, he has considered the evidence and applied reason to work out the most effective ways to improve the world (i.e. by becoming a banker), though he may never have heard about act-utilitarianism.

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Animals / General / Rights / Social justice

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Is it Wrong to Make Animals Work for Us?

Husky ride in Lapland / Photo by Ugur Arpaci on Unsplash

In debates about the ethical dimensions of using nonhuman animal labour, people increasingly argue that some forms of labour are compatible with animals’ interests, including their interests in freedom. The reason for this is that animals can choose to cooperate with us and choose to work for us. These choices manifest themselves in the animals’ informed enthusiasm for the activity, and this affirmation is considered especially significant when the animal has meaningful opportunities for dissent but chooses not to take them up. Under such circumstances, some suggest that we can interpret the animal’s wilful engagement as a form of consent. Examples of the kinds of jobs that animals might consent to – compatible with their basic interests, like not being harmed – are some forms of human therapy, conservation work, sporting activities, and non-invasive research.

I disagree. I have argued elsewhere that an animal’s willingness to engage in discrete activities and interactions within a role is not sufficient to show that they consent to the role itself. Here I want to try out a different argument: the fundamental problem with making animals work for us is that it typically involves us usurping their purposive will and harnessing their bodily powers to achieve human-given ends.

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Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / General / Public Philosophy

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Beyond the Ivory Tower Interview with Chris Armstrong

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series, a conversation between Matt Perry and Chris Armstrong. Chris is a Professor of Political Theory at the University of Southampton, winner of the 2023 Lynton Caldwell Award from the American Political Science Association and the author of A Blue New Deal (Yale University Press), an accessible and popular book about the politics of the ocean. He primarily works on issues at the intersection of global justice and the environment. He has published 6 books in total (including with Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press), over 50 journal articles and numerous articles in popular media, including The Guardian and The Conversation. Matt spoke to Chris about his experiences writing for a wider audience, his motivations to do so, and what tips he might have for others hoping to do the same.

© Chris Armstrong

Matt Perry: Thanks again for agreeing to chat! First, I’d like to ask you why you decided to pursue a career in Political Theory, and what factors led you to address the topics your work focuses on?

Chris Armstrong: When I was at school, I had no conception whatsoever of what political theory might be, or even that it existed. People in my family didn’t go to university. I didn’t really realize you could think about power, ideologies, culture and society in quite an analytical way until I picked up a sociology textbook secondhand.

I announced to my teachers that I was going to completely change all the A levels that I had been intending to do, away from sciences, and then went off to university to do Politics and Sociology. I then did my master’s in International Relations. Still, I was fairly untutored in political theory until my PhD, and in that sense I’ve found my way slowly into the (sub)discipline from the outside. I did my PhD on gender inequality. I set myself the task of investigating whether Michael Walzer’s theory could help us think about gender inequality, which was an interesting project. I’ve been finding my way since then, and I’ve shifted the direction of my work a few times. I moved into thinking about global justice first and then thinking about more environmental issues.

Right now in my career, I’m really appreciating the fact that a lot of what I read is science, history and law. And I kind of read quite indiscriminately across disciplines. In a sense, what I’m doing there is finding my way back to the beginning, where I just read indiscriminately and was interested in everything.

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Climate / Environment / General / Governance / Public Philosophy

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Choose Your Own Philosophical Policy Role

In this interactive “choose-your-own-adventure” post, Kian Mintz-Woo (University College Cork) explores the different roles that philosophers might play in supporting the development of public policies. This is based on his recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

[§1]

Congratulations! You have been invited to participate in a government policy-recommendation committee in [insert your research area of expertise]. You look around and see some academics (a political scientist, an economist and a [insert relevant] natural scientist), but also some political bureaucrats and some representatives of civil society. You have been jointly tasked on evaluating and recommending a policy option.

‘This is our justice theorist,’ they say in introduction. Or maybe ‘Please welcome our ethicist!’ You’re a little intimidated. You’ve never done something like this before, but you want to contribute in a way that is useful for the group—but also reflects the appropriate role for a philosopher.

When it comes time for you to contribute, do you:

  • explain, defend, and apply your substantive normative position and how it applies to this policy question (‘the partisan’): Jump to [§2]; or
  • explain what you take to be the relevant societal values and how they bear on this policy question (‘the populist’): Jump to [§3]; or
  • act as a ‘conduit for the discipline’ and explain a variety of positions and the arguments that link them to particular policy options, looking for convergence and divergence between different normative positions (‘the convergent evaluator’): Jump to [§4]?

[§2]

‘I’m a normative theorist who has considered this area extensively,’ you begin. ‘The principles and theories of [insert your normative position] are clearly stronger than the alternatives. Indeed, we can tell that those principles are useful as they show that [your preferred policy option] is highly justifiable.’

Some members of the committee, having never heard the policy options discussed in this kind of theoretical way, find that your position sounds quite plausible. Discussion continues, with the following rebuttal occasionally offered to alternative views: ‘But justice demands [your preferred policy option], according to our justice theorist!’

You find yourself squirming slightly, since you realize that [your normative opponent at a more famous university] could also have been invited instead, and, as they have a different normative position, they would have argued for [your dispreferred policy option]. But you content yourself with the thought that, luckily, you are here instead of them. Jump to [§5].

[§3]

‘We have to remember that we are here to consider and recommend public policies,’ you begin. ‘So it behooves us to consider what the public thinks. Luckily, I have a more than passing familiarity with [news opinions, polling data, historical documents, other potential sources of societal value] and I think the deep values of society are [liberal, conservative, egalitarian, xenophobic, utopian, etc.]. That is very helpful because it shows that [society’s preferred policy option] is highly justifiable.’

The committee is intrigued and begins to debate about whether these are society’s real values. One member points out that it would be somewhat more convincing if a social scientist could inform the committee, muttering something under their breath about ‘empirics’ and ‘armchair philosophers’. Another member asks whether society’s values are reflected by what society does or what society says. Yet another asks whether we should really be thinking about what society did or said.

You find yourself squirming slightly, since the questions the committee keeps asking you sound like ones that maybe a social psychologist or a sociologist or a historian would have an easier time answering. Jump to [§5].

[§4]

‘What do philosophers do?’ you begin. ‘Many of you are wondering that, but you might not really know. Well, part of what we do is we try to make arguments or draw valid inferences based on various normative positions. For instance, in this particular policy context, some influential principles and theories are [you introduce some relevant positions]. While there is significant theoretical disagreement, [some policy option] can be justified from very many normative positions and [some other policy option] can be justified from quite a lot of positions. Here is how those justifications work…’

The committee pays close attention, with some members nodding sagely when certain positions are mentioned and a couple interested murmurs as you draw some subtle inferences. Afterwards, the committee discusses which principles they are drawn to and question some of the arguments you present.

You find yourself squirming slightly, since you wonder if your summary of the arguments is idiosyncratic or whether you were fair to the various interlocutors’ positions. But you comfort yourself by thinking that you gave it your best shot and that at least you didn’t give a wild misrepresentation of the debate. Continue to [§5].

[§5]

After much discussion, multiple meetings, and several reports, the committee ultimately decides to recommend [your preferred policy option]. You are surprised but pleased, although you remain unconvinced about whether your particular recommendation made any difference. You finish your committee work with a mix of inspiration and skepticism about the role of policy committees.

But you also can’t help realizing that you can’t wait to go back and try it over again, maybe a little differently.

[The (very slightly) less interactive version of this blogpost can be found at: Mintz-Woo, Kian. Forthcoming. “Explicit Methodologies for Normative Evaluation in Public Policy, as Applied to Carbon Budgets.” Journal of Applied Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.70047 .]

A version of this blog post was cross-posted at New Work in Philosophy website.

Animals / Duties / Education / Environment / General / Health / Moral values

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Using wonder to achieve animal rights

In this post, Steve Cooke, (University of Leicester) discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the experience of wonder as a route towards justice for nonhuman animals.

Par Arnaud 25 — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27321151

Every year, more than 90 billion land animals are killed for food. Most are raised in factory farms. Campaigns for animal rights often rely upon shocking images of their suffering to gain attention and drive change. Whilst this often succeeds, it can also be counter-productive and drive people away. Being confronted by the harms we cause is uncomfortable. Rather than change behaviour, many people instead try to escape feelings of shame, disgust, horror, and sadness. They do this through rationalisation and carefully avoiding evidence. Hence, there’s a need for other strategies, ones that make use of more pleasant emotions. The feeling of wonder is just such an emotion. Cultivating wonder at nonhuman animals has the potential to change how they are treated.

Wonder is an emotion we feel when confronted by the mysterious and magical and we often feel it when confronted by things we don’t fully understand. When we encounter something wonderous, our attention is grabbed and we begin to search for meaning and understanding. For this reason, wonder has been considered an important emotion many philosophers. One important feature of it is that things we feel wonderment at cannot easily be ignored. Because wondrous things press us to find meaning and significance, wonder can also cause an ethical re-evaluation. Not only that, but wonder is by nature a positive attitude. When we experience wonder towards something, we attend to it closely and regard it as especially valuable. 

These features of wonder make it a useful emotion to for animal activists to encourage. One change is difficult is because animal lives have been made banal. For example, animals are frequently conceived merely as products and described in ways that remove individuality. Modern animal agriculture is directed at sameness, routine, and predictability. It treats animals as replaceable units of production. Mass killing is made routine and thus uninteresting. Finding wonder in the lives of individual animals acts as a counter to these processes of disenchantment.

For as long as it has been possible, the mass slaughter of nonhuman animals has been moved away from the public’s gaze. Studies have shown that the more visible the lives of animals are, the more legal protections they receive. As a result, the meat industry works hard to conceal and sanitise what goes on in factory farms and slaughterhouses. In response, animal activists use what is known as ‘the politics of sight’. This form of activism involves drawing attention to harm in order to stimulate compassion. But, because it makes people feel bad, it needs them to be willing to experience and attend to that discomfort. Many are not. Here, wonder can function to draw attention without provoking discomfort. Wonder can replace compassion or cause people to value animals enough to take on its emotional burden.

Radically changing how animals are treated, such as by ending factory farming, requires paying much more attention to animal suffering. Before they can be granted rights, animals need to be seen as unique and valuable individuals. Rational arguments, no matter how sound, often fail if made without heed to moral psychology. Hence, achieving moral progress requires us to also think about how we experience encounters with other beings. Documentaries like My Octopus Teacher have probably helped campaigns against octopus farming more than any rational argument. Those working towards justice for nonhuman animals should therefore consider how to harness emotions like wonder to support their objectives.

Steve Cooke works on animal rights and the ethics of activism. He is primarily interested theories of justice for animals, moral progress, and duties in non-ideal circumstances.

Children / Climate / Duties / Environment / General

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My child, whose emissions?

In this post, Serena Olsaretti (ICREA/Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and Isa Trifan (University of Essex) discuss their recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, where they explore the morality of having children in light of climate change.

Created with GenAI

‘Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children!’  So announced the title of an article in The Guardian in 2017, when the idea that procreation is bad for the environment started to once again garner significant public attention. The Guardian article pointed to recent empirical evidence about the carbon impact of different ‘green’ choices a person could make if they wanted to reduce their carbon emissions. The evidence suggested that the carbon ‘savings’ a person could make by choosing to ‘have one fewer child’ in a developed country far exceeded the carbon reductions a person could make by making typical, green choices like giving up one’s car, going on fewer flights, or recycling put together.

Since then, in political theory as in the public sphere, this question has been gaining traction, with newspapers articles in France, Germany, Italy and Spain exploring the same issue. So, is having children in developed societies just as bad, or worse, from the point of view of climate justice as living a lavish, high-consumption lifestyle?

Our answer is: it depends. The kind of ‘moral equivalence’ that many have sought to draw between procreation, on the one hand, and a high-consumption/high-emissions lifestyle (or eco-gluttony), on the other hand, can be interpreted in at least two ways. The first interpretation is that both procreation and eco-gluttony are wrong because both involve overstepping our carbon budget. Assuming that we all have a moral obligation to keep our carbon emissions within a certain limit, or budget, the idea is this. If it is wrong for an eco-glutton to overstep her carbon budget by going on frequent, far-flung holidays every year, then, by logical consistency, it is also wrong for a person to overstep their budget by choosing to bring a child (and therefore a new carbon emitter) into a developed, high-consumption society.

We argue that this ‘strict’ way of drawing the moral equivalence between procreation and eco-gluttony fails because it wrongly assumes that the carbon costs of children should be ‘paid for’ from their parents’ budgets only. But, we argue, insofar as all of society benefits from a certain amount of demographic renewal, the carbon costs that come with bringing new people into the world should be shared between the parents and the rest of society. The carbon costs of some demographic renewal should be treated like we treat the carbon costs of producing other public goods like road infrastructure and national defence: they should be covered by everyone’s carbon budgets. If so, for some parents, at least, it is not true that having children will cause them to overstep their personal carbon budgets.

But there is a second way to interpret the moral equivalence between procreation and eco-gluttony. Procreation and eco-gluttony may be morally on a par, but only in the ‘lax’ sense in which both may be liable to moral criticism from a climate justice standpoint. While eco-gluttony is, indeed, a way of overstepping one’s carbon budget, having children need not be, as we have seen. Nevertheless, those considering procreation in developed societies may have good reason to ‘have one fewer child’ if doing so would contribute to reducing the harms of climate warming.

The basic idea is that if we are well placed to help reduce harm, we ought to do so, at least when this is not unreasonably burdensome for us. If having one fewer child than originally planned is not unreasonably burdensome for some prospective procreators, they may have good reason to refrain from having that child in virtue of the fact that they are uniquely well placed, practically and morally, to stop the entire chain of emissions that their child, and their child’s descendants, would produce. A would-be procreator is uniquely well placed, both practically and morally, to prevent 100% of the emissions of their child and of further descendants because, by contrast to most other individual choices that can reduce global emissions, the choice to refrain from having a child is one that we are (i) morally permitted to make, (ii) uniquely (justifiably) legally entitled to make, and such that (iii) we are able to singlehandedly ensure that a chain of emissions is not produced. If stopping this potentially enormous chain of emissions would help to reduce the harms of global warming, prospective procreators have good reason, perhaps even a moral obligation, to have one fewer child after all.

General

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Can Our Current Academic Model Go On in the Age of AI?

It has been almost three years since ChatGPT was released in the public arena amid great hopes, worries, and, perhaps more than anything, hype. While artificial intelligence tools, including of the Large Language Model variety to which ChatGPT belongs, were already deployed in many areas by then, it was this event that sparked both widespread obsession with AI and the subsequent pouring of trillions of dollars into AI development in just three years. Meanwhile, though still relatively in its infancy, Generative AI has indeed impacted numerous fields, and these include education and research, which together form the core dimensions of academia. Some of the concerns raised by the usage of Generative AI in academia, especially when it comes to student evaluations, have already been taken up on this blog, here, here, here, and here. In fact, out of all the Justice Everywehere posts focusing on AI in the past three years, exactly half looked at this particular problem, which is unsurprising, since on the one hand most of the contributors to this blog are educators, and on the other one that political philosophy is methodologically built around the capacity to engage in original thinking. In this post, which inaugurates the new season of Justice Everywhere, I want to signal a broader issue, which is – to put it bluntly – that key aspects of the way in which academia currently works are likely to be upended by AI in the near future. And, crucially, that as a collective, we seem to be dangerously inert in the face of this scenario.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2020/11/06/an-ai-robot-wrote-my-term-paper/
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